Category: Yo Ivanhoe

  • A Man Goes on a Journey, a Stranger Appears in Town: There Are Only Two Stories in All the World

    Prentice had changed so much in twenty years. You could stop by the little local historical society at the County Fairgrounds and look at photographs of the way the town used to be, but pretty much every striking thing you would encounter on the walls there had been knocked down –the old courthouse with the…

  • Excerpt From A Failed Attempt At A Novel

    My family had always been a remarkably insulated and self-contained unit. Despite my parents’ divorces (they divorced when I was eight years old, remarried two years later, and divorced again just after I graduated from high school) there really hadn’t been much in the way of drama or anything you could call real tragedy in…

  • A Kingdom of Stinks and Sighs

    Come on, give a rat’s ass, would you, you fuckers? Give it the old college try. Take a good look around and tell me what you see. Don’t lie to me. My kingdom is a laughingstock. I’ve let myself go, grown fat on the sautéed kidneys of disc jockeys and dickweeds whose gross ambition offended…

  • Sursum Corda: Give Thanks

    I’d say it’s a decent idea, Thanksgiving, even if it’s one of those old, decent ideas that means almost nothing anymore. Still, it does strike me as a worthwhile thing, the notion of taking time out of your life to give thanks for whatever the hell you have to give thanks for. And surely you…

  • He's Abbott, I'm Costello: Cross-Wired Conversation With My Dog At Two A.M.

    Would you say? I would say, yes. Say what? That is the question. Yes, that’s the question. No, that is the question. No question mark. What is the question? Say what? I said, "What is the question?" And I said, "Say what?" I heard you the first time, but I still haven’t heard your answer:…

  • Tears of a Clown, Redux

    I was born a clown, and in retrospect my parents were incredibly good sports about what must surely have been on a number of levels a shock and a disappointment. They’d been trying for years to have a child, and they accepted me immediately as a blessing and loved me unconditionally for what I was.…